


Opening Other Doors

by Born In Captivity- Ineligible to Release (Jashasedai)



Series: Alternate Universe- Tame Racing Drivers [3]
Category: Motorcycling RPF, Sports RPF, motocross - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe- Tame Racing Drivers, Doubles of Every Character, Motocross, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7616554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jashasedai/pseuds/Born%20In%20Captivity-%20Ineligible%20to%20Release
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an AU where a secret species is used as Racing Drivers, what happens when one wants something new?</p><p>If you haven't read the series summary, this will not make a lot of sense.</p><p>Edited for format 08/29/17</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opening Other Doors

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the Tame Racing Drivers AU. 
> 
> Thanks to my awesome Beta, Marginaliana.
> 
> Real People don't belong to me.
> 
> This story is fiction and is no reflection on anyone in it. The story does belong to me, as does the AU in which it is set.

Opening Other Doors  
Alternate Universe- Tame Racing Drivers  
Part 3-Doors  
Fandom- Motocross

In an AU where a secret species is used as Racing Drivers, what happens when one wants something new?

Tags: Motocross, Motorcycle Racing, Ricky Carmichael, Alternate Universe, Slavery

  
Opening Other Doors

Ricky was a little glad his new job didn't include actually driving race cars.  They were exciting, and he was going to be spending a lot of his time around them from now on, but he didn't want to do it day in and day out for the next decade. He was happy to stand back and let Ratchet have all the fun.  He didn't mind standing in the pit and calling signals into the headset, doing the paperwork, signing autographs and blaming bad races on the car in press conferences.  He liked paperwork. 

If he hadn't been contacted by the rally team 6 months ago, he probably would have gone on to have a desk job, and grown out of his motor based hobbies, just like most kids did.  It wasn’t exactly a lifestyle that promoted stability, and he was smart enough to realize that racing was a career path made mostly of closed doors. Had things gone differently, he probably would've been one of those guys who did their own light service on their cars, when they had time, and occasionally got it into their heads to fix the dishwasher, to the exasperation of their wives. 

Instead he'd spent 10 minutes in a battle of wills with his own lookalike and had been working on a pit crew ever since.

One of the guys had brought his Yamaha Enduro out today and Ricky was looking over it when they brought Ratchet out.  The other guy was telling him about the handling, and Ricky was feeling physical pain because he wanted touch it so much, when he felt suddenly dizzy. 

He was choking.  He gasped for breath and realized there was something wrapped around his neck.  He dug his fingers under it and pried it up over his face.  A rush of air came to his lungs and he strode forward. 

He caught a blank look on his own face as he walked past and knelt and ran a glove along the engine.  With an engineer's eye, he followed the lines of the tubes and cables.  There was no steering wheel, just two handles, with the relevant controls on them, dials in the center and two fixed pedals on either side. 

He felt himself rummage around in their shared memories for some explanation of the wonderful new vehicle.

He stood up and swung a leg over it. It felt warm between his legs.  He lifted one boot to the pedal, saw the particular way he should tap the gear lever.  Hand operated clutch, foot operated gear, interesting.  The pedal wasn't a pedal, either, it was a peg to stabilize his boot. 

He turned his right hand back gently and felt his heart sing, for the first time ever, really.  He imitated the noise the wonderful vehicle made.  Beautiful.  He stroked its body. 

Then the choking sensation came back.  The dizziness was making it hard to keep his seat.  He pried the choking cable off his neck again and ducked close to the vehicle.  He could feel its welcoming purr through his chest, he was closer than he'd ever been to any car.  A tap of his foot and a flick of his wrist and he was gone.

The vehicle accelerated like no car ever had.  He was across the field and onto the track before a car would've been away from the line.  He approached a corner at speed and prepared to turn the handlebars hard in.

"No!"  Ricky heard himself scream, inside and outside.  "Don't turn!  Lean!"  He struggled with disbelief for a moment.  Ratchet had never fought him so hard, but he couldn't let him crank the handlebars to the side going into a corner at that speed.  Ratchet subsided.  Ricky swung to one side of the bike and dropped a knee into the corner.  He could feel the breath of the tarmac inches from the Nomex.  "Steer with your body."

Ratchet gloried in the willingness of the bike.  No car would answer to the weight shift of its driver so responsively. This vehicle was giving itself to his control almost indecently, it was like...a female, moving with him, anticipating what he was going to want, synchronizing with his body.  They were one.  He and Ricky and the vehicle, all one fused unit, faster, harder, stronger and more than they could ever be apart. 

He found the apex of corner after corner.  It was so much easier.  There was so much more room.  The lines were more elegant, because this vehicle didn't take up the entire track.  He could control where he was going down to a hand's breadth line of tire. 

He saw a memory flicker in response to this thought, and chased it into the wider consciousness beyond. 

Ricky had memories of motorcycles doing things cars would never do.  Flying, spinning, drivers hanging off them as they jumped incomprehensible distances, racing down razor edge mountains with hundreds of feet of drop on either side. 

Ratchet slammed the bike to a stop in front of Ricky.

Ricky was suddenly back in his own body, looking at the helmeted figure gesturing wildly, passionately, desperately.  "Motocross," he stuttered.  "What you want is Motocross."

Ratchet crossed his arms and nodded.  That was what he wanted.  That was what he was going to race.  It was up to Ricky to figure out how.

It turned out to be easier than he thought.  Ratchet pissed on the tires of the next two cars they brought him, and totally ignored the one after that.  The lure of car keys had worked in the experience of every handler in the employ of the team, and the medic, and everyone on the team who'd ever worked with Racing Drivers, and anyone they contacted who might know. But not with Ratchet.

They tried different kinds of keys, they tried different kinds of cars, but after the first two, Ratchet just stood with his arms crossed and imitated the Enduro.

He'd also, somehow, caught onto and learned how to countermand the lead stick, which was similarly unprecedented. 

So there was no dealing with him.  Until they brought him a motorcycle, whereupon he became immediately as malleable as a well-trained dog.

He rode better when Ricky was with him, not just watching, but actually experiencing with him.  At first Ricky had to build up tolerance for spending so much time in such close contact with a being who was so subject to passions and who communicated with pure, unfiltered emotion.  It took a year after they started training for Motocross before Ricky could walk away after a race without dripping sweat like he'd been dragged through a wringer.  The first time Ratchet had gone over a jump on his dirt bike, Ricky had sat in the truck and sobbed for an hour.

It wasn't cathartic, either – the strength of the emotions didn't ebb with time, Ricky just learned a greater capacity for them.  It was impossible to explain to the team, because how could he tell them that he was there, second by second, feeling g-force and fear and ecstasy and adrenaline, blown up by a factor of 20 and projected on the big screen? 

They couldn't understand how he could sit, staring at a monitor, or at distant figures on a track, and mutter under his breath occasionally, and still be shaking so badly at the end of a race that he couldn't stand up.  They couldn't understand why he'd become like a raw nerve, why they had to walk on eggshells, because minor annoyances were so much more infuriating when everything he felt was turned up past 11. 

It was a strain for everyone. 

The crew who couldn't handle it left and were replaced with a crew who could, and Ricky learned to surf on the ocean of raw emotion. The first 6 months were the worst and then he found his footing, the crew found theirs, and the wins came, one after another.

The doors to the future opened, and there were butlers holding them. Even if racing hadn’t gone from a dark, bitter hallway, to a gloriously sunlit plane with more possibilities than he could possibly have grabbed, he’d have done it for free just to feel the rush of Rachet’s glee when the sky flashed by as they flipped the bike in perfect synchronicity.

Ratchet named the bikes.  Ricky felt pretty fortunate he didn't have to share the names with the crew.  They weren't words – more like experiences, concepts.  The Enduro that was the first bike he'd ever ridden and never ridden again, was "when the sun comes through the clouds over a rainy track, shining light on the wet, so the course is finally visible after many laps."  Ricky called it "the one that showed us the way." 

The bike he learned jumping on was "when a little Racing Driver doesn't know enough to see that flinging their hands out wide doesn't make them go any faster, but knows it makes them FEEL faster." Ricky called that one "Hope."

  
Ratchet was convinced they were females.  He'd never expressed any kind of conviction like that about cars.  Then again, he had never felt about cars as he did about bikes.  Maybe other Racing Drivers talked to their cars, loved their cars with as much love as they gave their handlers.  Maybe that was just another way Ratchet was different from other Racing Drivers.

  
Maybe he was a new species.  Racing Riders.

  
If he could find others like Ratchet, maybe there were other doors that could be opened.

**Author's Note:**

> Is it fair for Ratchet to race against humans who have no hope of winning against him?
> 
>  
> 
> If you want to read more about Racing Riders, please check out the Racing Riders series.  
> http://archiveofourown.org/series/688452


End file.
